


nunquam ambigua fide desciuisse

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Contritum Coronam [7]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Identity Issues, M/M, Memories, Past Lives, Past Relationship(s), Post Regis' Life-Changing Field Trip, Rated E for Verge of Porn, Recovered Memories, Reincarnation, Trauma Wakes Past Lives, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:21:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22302532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: "Marshal Leonis," she greeted, polite as grace."Who's with you?""Ardyn Izunia, the Chancellor of Niflheim,"Ardyn Lucis Caelumintroduces himself. Cor raised an eyebrow.
Relationships: Ardyn Izunia/Cor Leonis, Ardyn Izunia/Original Male Character
Series: Contritum Coronam [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605325
Kudos: 17





	nunquam ambigua fide desciuisse

**Author's Note:**

> Reincarnation: Ustrina reincarnates as Cor and remembers when Gilgamesh knocks him around a bit.

It's a graveyard, Cor thinks, the Trial of the Blademaster. He had known it would be, of course, had heard about people going in and just never coming out, knew that the price of failure was death. He goes in anyway, into the depths of the dark, in and in and in.

Clarus had refused. Had called the Trial a foolish, reckless crusade for people who thought they could hasten personal glory by survival. To attempt it is suicide; it's a deathtrap. There's probably nothing at the end, and anyway, Clarus has a prince to protect.

He's probably not  _ wrong, _ but Cor has always been a bottle of anger tucked into a small package, and it's a challenge-- and he's never turned down a challenge. If he sneaks away from the base at night, if he makes his path through the dark, it's a challenge. He'd gone and succeeded, and now: the Trial of the Blademaster sits before him.

The nodachi is heavy in his hands, a horseman's blade for cutting down foot soldiers, a foot soldier's blade for cutting down horsemen. He expects to use the wakazashi more, smaller, more useful in closed spaces. But it turns out there is quite a bit of room in most of the area, if one ignores the bodies left behind. He passes one entire regiment, the Lucian 49th, strewn dead in one of the larger chambers. Not all of them-- there were a couple bodies before, and even then, he's pretty sure the 49th had more  _ people. _ There's a small triage station, medics with red cuffs.

They're not the only corpses in here. But they're the only ones who don't stand up to him. Lift weapons against him. Skeletons and empty suits of armor, tattered rags of cloth. Cor has never been superstitious. There are no unexplained things in the world. No apparitions, no ghosts.  _ (Of course there are, _ a small part of him whispers. The superstitious part that was always there, the one that said  _ danger _ and  _ move _ whenever an assassin tried to get at Mors, tried to get at Regis.  _ Of course they are those who linger, ghosts of the lost. My friends. _

Cor pays this part of him no mind. He's busy.)

He spends the whole trip down trying not to die, riding high on the thrill of it, the risk. It's dangerous and exhilarating and he's so good at it, he hasn't had to stop yet. Which is good, because if he stops, he'll think about why it looks so familiar down here. Why it strikes him with a feeling of coming home. There's no reason for it. Yet, still, it feels as those he has been here before and that's..

That will get him killed, if he lets it. So he doesn't.

He keeps going.

At the end of the Trial is Gilgamesh. He's already thrashed Cor once, there in the pool of water with it dragging at his pants. It's kind of ironic; Cor is mortal, flesh and blood, and Gilgamesh truly is  _ not. _

Not anymore. And Cor shouldn't feel any grief from that, but he does. Oh, how he does.

Gilgamesh puts him on his back time and again, shoves him off. Cor has a busted lip, a bruised eye, cuts and gashes. Gilgamesh throws him back again and Cor lands hard, the air knocked out of him, grip on his blades loosened; the spirit kicks it aside and red goes-- and when Cor reaches for it, Gilgamesh puts a boot on his hand. There's pressure, but no pain; a warning, not an injury.

The very real, live steel of Gilgamesh's sword rests against his throat.

_ "What has become of you, Ustrina?" _

"I don't know who the hell that is!" Cor snarls, and there is a part of him that wants Gilgamesh to finish the job. He leans upward against him, feels the blade bite into his flesh, and Gilgamesh's sword vanishes into a shower of shards. He moves away, reaches and picks up Cor's sword. Retreats.

_ "There is too much fire in you now, Ustrina." _

Something explodes in him, bursts behind his nose, a blood vessel maybe? It doesn't matter. If he's going to die, he's going to die-- and he welcomes that, honestly, he has always welcomed that, but he has never had the good grace to  _ die. The Blademaster _ takes a few more steps away from him. He can't see his face thanks to the mask, but he can  _ hear _ the frown in his voice.

_ "You yet live in a prison not of your own making, without hope of rescue. Does he bind you still?" _

"Fuck off," Cor growled, trying to push himself up despite the nausea. He still had the shorter blade of the pair.

_ "Too much fire," _ Gilgamesh repeated.  _ "I will cool those flames for you, old friend." _

Then the ghost kicked him from the bridge.

  
  


There is a redhead in the Citadel, familiar and unfamiliar both, with eyes of liquid light. He's not wearing true Lucian black, having taken for a shade of gray and accents of burgundy. It's not quite the color of the Scourge hearts that beat inside ronin, but it's not far off, either, and the color makes Cor's hair stand on end. He knows that color in this life perhaps better than in the last, though not nearly as intimately as he would have liked, he supposes.

Still. It hurts, when those eyes look at him and then slide away, no recognition inside their depths.

Technically he's not supposed to be here right now. He has less than an hour before he has to go harass rookies-- his kids are coming through with flying colors, but it's almost fun to watch a passel of blondes take on their other instructors while he scares the hell out of the rest of the cadets. And before he has that free time, he intended to get a bunch of paperwork done. It was the tedium of paperwork that drove men to drink, and Cor was hardly an exception, but he liked to think he drank less if he did it early. 

He could probably shuffle it on to his subordinates, but it was busy work more than anything. Being the Marshal of the Crownsguard was infinitely easier than being the Hand of the King. Less to manage, less to organize... and yet, somehow, in some ways, more. He has more direct control over his subordinates. He cannot leave the city as he pleases, but that is hardly a new thing. He  _ can _ come and go outside the citadel as he wishes, though, which is more than he had before. He has the king's ear, on occasion, though not quite as much as he wished he did, not as much as he would have liked. Regis still looked upon him as the young hot headed swordsmen who went into a suicide zone with intent to die and came crawling out quite nearly dead. He still looked at him as a person who needed protecting, often from his own foolishness. So much of his wisdom went unheeded.

Cor wasn't sure what  _ wisdom _ it was, telling him to cross the distance between himself and the redhead. He thought perhaps it was less wisdom and more hormones, considering.

There were laugh lines and frown lines on his face, and the pleased curl of his lip nearly did Cor in before he even got to him. He was flanked by two of Niflheim's metal soldiers, and led by one of the many servants of the citadel. Cor stopped in front of them, and the girl-- Yavanna, he thought her name was-- stopped as well, looking up at him.

"Marshal Leonis," she greeted, polite as grace.

"Who's with you?"

"Ardyn Izunia, the Chancellor of Niflheim,"  _ Ardyn Lucis Caelum _ introduces himself. Cor raised an eyebrow.

"I'll walk him, Yavanna. What rooms?"

"Ah, the.. the East Ruby Garden, Marshal."

"Thank you, Yavanna. You're dismissed."

She left them in a hurry.

The East Ruby Garden was a suite of rooms done up in green and red, colored up for a lost kingdom Niflheim had swallowed up at some point. There was going to be video and audio security measures, both to keep track of someone in here as well as to assure their safety, which meant that Cor was going to have to do some quick talking if he wanted five minutes alone with the Chancellor. He unlocked the door with a keycode and a thumbprint, then opened the door for him. The magitek troopers stepped on either side of the door and took up their posts, and Cor followed Ardyn into the rooms, closing the door behind him.

Who was working security today? One of Monica's people, he thought, and fished his phone out of his pocket. "Room Security, I need surveillance to the Ruby Garden turned off."

_ "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask under who's authorization, Marshal." _

"My own. Authorization code  _ holy fire, the lion of the king. _ "

A heartbeat, and then the youth's voice came back on. "Authorization cleared. The suite is dark for an hour, sir."

"Very good. Take an early lunch." He hung the phone back up and turned his full attention back to Ardyn. The man looked entirely at home, here in these rooms (they were, honestly, the wrong rooms. Cor thought he would have liked to have seen him in the Midwinter Dawn, mostly white and pale yellows, but perhaps that would have washed his complexion out too much.) He pocketed his phone.

"Marshal Leonis. To what do I owe this pleasure."

Cor locked the door. It wouldn't give the MTs much pause, but it would have to do. It would give him a little warning, though.

He considered Ardyn for a moment, wondering what to say or do, wondering why he had been foolish enough to follow him in here instead of simply locking him in. He had  _ duties _ to attend to.

And yet.

And yet....

He stepped forward, the agile liquid grace of a man who's hunting prime hadn't quite left him. Some of that was augmented magic, and some of it was simply the fact that Cor was really, really good at his job, and needed to stay that way. Then, when he was about a foot away from Ardyn, he sank down to his knees before him, looked back up at him, jaw lifted in supplication.

Not all of it was him from before. Some of it was trained in Lucis. Some of this he had learned from  _ Somnus. _

It was weird, kneeling before Ardyn. He had never done so before, not even at their wedding. But clearly much had changed since Ustrina had been Somnus' favored prisoner, and he was honestly not above using and abusing those things now.

He didn't imagine the flicker of undisguised, absolute delight on Ardyn's face, looking down at him. The lightning flash of hunger. It wasn't for him, he knew, not for Cor. But very gently, short-trimmed nails reached out to scrape over his scalp. "Hm. Marshal. You look very good on your knees before a man who is not your king."

He reached out, remembering how Ardyn had liked it before, and grasped at his pantlegs for steadying as he nuzzled at him through his pants. Ardyn jerked like he'd been lightning struck, but Cor dared not let him go, and for whatever reason, Ardyn didn't warp away. He stayed right there, still and coiled tight, as Cor pressed against him, emboldened by the lack of simply  _ not _ running away. "No, I think I kneel before just the  _ right _ king;  _ my _ king, your majesty."

Some attention in his gold gaze snapped back to Cor. He hadn't realized it had been gone until he looked up at him and saw it there.

Something dark snaked in Ardyn's vision, and for a moment Cor worried he had crossed a line in this time, something taboo, but Ardyn definitely did not  _ seem  _ turned off, when Cor opened his mouth to press an open-mouthed kiss at his growing erection through his pants. He closed his eyes instead, used the hand cradling his skull to draw him in closer, nearly grinding, and the intensity he felt in there startled him, nearly enough to retreat. He grasped at Ardyn's thighs, briefly, then shoved his hands further up, trying to find blindly the fasteners of his pants. The material made his efforts to get his husband's skin free a difficulty; Cor took that as a personal challenge too, struggled against Ardyn's grip until he could spy where the button and zipper was, and then he found the wasteband and  _ pulled. _

He made a point to call him  _ majesty _ every single time he could find a way to throw it into the conversation. Before and during his moments there, on his knees before a hungry and starve touched human being. Again and again as Ardyn shoved him into the bedroom, deft fingers more used to making modern contraptions behave for his own purposes, and perhaps not necessarily more used to making sure  _ Cor's _ pants behaved but that hardly mattered, the way Ardyn rewarded his breathy _your majesty_ , feral and pushed to the edge of his control.


End file.
